They are being slated as one of the best – if not the best – live bands in Australia at the moment, so expectations were high for Eddy Current Suppression Ring and their recent tour of dates across the country to launch third LP Rush To Relax.
The Melbourne four piece are wrapping it all up this Friday with a show in their home town but from all reports the tour has met expectations: a real honest-to-goodness, loud-as-fuck rock show from a band who completely ignore the fashionising and posturing of most of the “garage” indie-rock bands around.
They most recently played sellout shows at The Zoo in Brisbane on Thursday, and at Sydney’s The Annandale on Friday and Saturday night’s, and the intimate size (and chilled out attitude of the venue security – high fives!) made for a good old fashioned sweat-drenched shoe-flying all in mosh out, complete with shirtless strangers hugging, mature aged rockers crowdsurfing, and large moshers rubbing each others’ bald heads affectionately/for good luck.
The crowd performed well – but not quite as well as the band.
Eddy Current (guitar), Rob Solid (bass) and Danny Current (drumkit) play so ear bleedingly loud at such a frenetic machine-gun pace and with such a casual manner that you kind of forget how tight they are, how polished the songwriting is, how accomplished they are as musicians. And be-gloved singer Brendan Suppression erratically veers between intense sexuality and wound-up psychopath as he dry humps the air, jumps into the crowd, convulses fitfully and stares you down maniacally. It’s kind of obscene and kind of hot. You can’t look away – in a good way.
Rush To Relax may not be their greatest album but Eddy Current Suppression Ring are living up to their live reputation.
